1. Technical Field
The present invention relates to a thin film transistor array panel for a liquid crystal display and a manufacturing method thereof.
2. Discussion of the Related Art
A liquid crystal display (LCD) is one of the most widely used flat panel displays. For example, an LCD is commonly found in a variety of electronic devices such as flat screen televisions, laptop computers, cell phones and digital cameras.
An LCD includes two panels provided with field-generating electrodes such as pixel electrodes and a common electrode with a liquid crystal (LC) layer interposed therebetween. The LCD displays images by applying voltages to the field-generating electrodes to generate an electric field in the LC layer, which determines orientations of LC molecules in the LC layer to adjust polarization of incident light.
The LCD further includes a plurality of switching elements connected to the pixel electrodes and a plurality of signal lines such as gate lines and data lines for controlling the switching elements to apply voltages to the pixel electrodes.
Recently, vertical alignment (VA) mode LCDs, which align LC molecules such that the long axes of the LC molecules are perpendicular to the panels in the absence of an electric field, have been used in the production of larger size displays for both LCD monitors and LCD television applications because they enable the manufacture of LCDs with higher contrast and wider viewing angles.
The wide viewing angle of the VA mode LCD can be realized by cutouts in the field-generating electrodes and protrusions on the field-generating electrodes. Since the cutouts and the protrusions can determine the tilt directions of the LC molecules, the tilt directions can be distributed into several directions by appropriately arranging the cutouts and the protrusions such that the reference viewing angle is widened.
The electric field applied to the LC layer is often enhanced to increase its luminance by raising the voltage applied to the pixel electrodes. Therefore, the electric field generated between the data lines and the pixel electrodes is also increased to disorder the orientations of the LC molecules disposed near edges of the pixel electrodes, thereby increasing the response time of the LC layer.
In the VA mode LCD, since incident light may not pass through the protrusions and the cutouts, larger protrusions or larger cutouts may decrease the aperture ratio. However, by keeping the protrusions or cutouts farther apart from each other to increase the aperture ratio, the availability of the protrusions or the cutouts may diminish and may instead amplify the disturbance of the electric field caused by the data lines, thereby elongating the response time of the LC layer.